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Help with Itunes and Airport Extreme

C

chrisgardner

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 24, 2007
13
0
Well, I have bought an Airport Extreme and a couple of Airport Expresses. I love the system and the HD through the USB port is incredible. I have over 150 gigs of songs and videos. I live in a foreign country so I buy a lot of TV shows etc. I have bought an external HD for my Itunes stuff but I was wondering if I could just have a library on the HD that is connected to my Extreme and play things from there. I have one at my office and one at my house so I would only need to use the external HD for the times that I am traveling. Is this possible without messing up Itunes and is there a simple way to do it? Thanks for any help that someone can give me.

Chris
 
Assuming you've left the iTunes settings and library location at its default, then simply move the iTunes folder from the Music folder on your Mac to the external hard drive whilst iTunes is closed. Now open iTunes while holding OPTION and you should be prompted to find a library. Navigate to your external drive and Bob's your uncle! It should be that easy. :)
 
I'd just like to query this a moment. Is it possible for iTunes to support multiple libraries? I have a MacBook Pro so the hard drive isn't enormous and video files take up a ton of space. What I would like (and hence I didn't think that this was possible) is to put my video files on an external disk but keep stuff like music and podcasts on my laptop. Of course, to complicate things I also want to sync everything with my 80GB iPod when my laptop is connected to the same network that has my external disk connected to the Airport Extreme base station...

is this possible?
 
Yeah, you can keep separate libraries wherever you want, but remember that the iPod will only automatically sync with one library. Having said that, if you set it to have its files manually managed then you can access multiple libraries with your iPod.

Even though it's recommended, iTunes doesn't have to manage your files. It might be better for you to create one library, but have different parts of it spread over different drives. You'll have to disable Keep Library Organised in the iTunes Preferences though. :)
 
it's also possible to have one library, with the content saved wherever you want it to be saved. the only thing with doing this is that if you move the content yourself (or if it's on an external drive which is disconnected) is that itunes will give you an error if it can't find a song that you want to play. it's very quiet about it - it just skips over the song in question and goes to the next one, leaving a little "!" behind next to the offender.

the way to do this is to open the itunes preferences, go to "advanced", and uncheck "copy to itunes music folder when adding to library". then, just put the music you want on the external drive, in a dedicated folder, (if it's already in the itunes library, you'll want to delete it from the library before doing this), then just select "add to library..." from the file menu in itunes, and choose the folder you've just put on the hard disk.

hope that made sense...

doing this means that you can add the same music to multiple itunes libraries (at once, if the hard drive is networked).

just exercise caution, because if you move any of the files around after they're in the library, itunes won't know where to find them. clicking the "!" that it leaves next to songs it can't find, will let you browse to their new location (which itunes will then remember until it's changed again).
 
Ah, cheers for that. I have seen the little exclamation mark when tunes have gone walkabout before but had not thought that I could use this to my advantage. I'll give this a bash at the weekend and see if this will help spare my laptop from bunking around a load of video files just for use on the iPod.
 
I feel kinda dumb writing this, but I've done everything right here and still no joy. When I show iTunes the library on the AirPort disk, it does some stuff and opens iTunes. I see my library and everything looks great, but when I go to "Get Info" on a track, it starts with "Macintosh HD:" instead of the AirPort disk name.

This is SO frustrating. I've even tried tricking it by closing iTunes and putting my local library in the trash, but then it finds the library in the trash and uses that one.

Am I missing something painfully obvious here? I'm far from a Mac n00b, but this one has me vexxed.

:confused:
 
mad jew said:
So you've dragged the library to the AirPort disk, you've held OPTION and opened iTunes, and then it still isn't using the correct library?
Click to expand...

That is correct. I've tried dragging the entire iTunes folder as well as just the iTunes Music folder while leaving everything else behind. Now I have it where iTunes is populated, but if I command-I on a song or try to play a song, it can't be found. It gives me a "!" to the left of the song and asks me to manually find every single song I want to play.
 
ScottE22 said:
I feel kinda dumb writing this, but I've done everything right here and still no joy. When I show iTunes the library on the AirPort disk, it does some stuff and opens iTunes. I see my library and everything looks great, but when I go to "Get Info" on a track, it starts with "Macintosh HD:" instead of the AirPort disk name.

This is SO frustrating. I've even tried tricking it by closing iTunes and putting my local library in the trash, but then it finds the library in the trash and uses that one.

Am I missing something painfully obvious here? I'm far from a Mac n00b, but this one has me vexxed.

:confused:
Click to expand...

within itunes preferences select advanced and check your itunes folder location is pointing to your hard drive that is connected to the extreme.

good luck
 
It is - that's what's so confusing... I think I'm going to start again from scratch...
 
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